Outdoors

The first traditional bows David Young built blew up on him.

BOISE, Idaho – While swimming in the east pond at Freedom Park in Star, Marc Brandes saw something peculiar in the water in front of him.

Perhaps there is something in the water in Spokane, because bikers from the region excelled at this month’s mountain biking national championships.

Hikers and mountain bikers have a few miles of new trail to explore this summer on Coeur d’Alene’s popular backyard mountain.

From staff reports

The eagle took off from the sage brush on the slope below me. I had not seen it or heard it until it whooshed upward with a flurry wing and bush, spooking the Brown Dog and me. It took its time. One, two, three beats of broad mottled wings, wider than I am tall, then silent and still, it caught the wind and rode it over the river.

A cedar waxwing, distinguished by its red wingtips, shakes off after a rain shower at Riverside State Park in this July 16 photo by Mark Hendrickson.

The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife and its partners are planning a project that aims to restore the floodplain of the Tucannon River, improve habitat for threatened spring chinook, steelhead and bull trout and fix a number of ailing fishing lakes along its course.

The shooting range on the Asotin Wildlife Area won’t reopen.

Trails at the English Point Recreation Area near Hayden Lake are back open after extensive work to clear fallen trees. 

I have a memory from many years ago, standing on a stone beach under a full moon, stripping off every layer of clothing, leaving my skivvies in a pile, and plunging into the dark waters of the lake. It is a primal, natural feeling, though then accompanied with the vulnerability of my nakedness and the brashness of adolescence.

PALOUSE TO CASCADES TRAIL, 5 MILES EAST OF RATTLESNAKE LAKE – Like a scene out of “Train Dreams,” railroad workers toiled on the steep slopes of the Cascades foothills in the 1910s to carve a path for the iron horse out of an unforgiving landscape. They cut down trees, laid brick, piled up gravel and forged a flat ribbon along a rugged hillside so steam engines could ply the route between Chicago and Puget Sound via Snoqualmie Pass.

The work to get mountain bikers back on the trails at Camp Sekani is underway, but it’s too soon to say exactly when the park might be ready for two-wheeled traffic.

Fly fishing

A moose and two calves look around at Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge in this July 12 photo by Rich Zwyiak.

The federal government has announced plans to shift management authority for threatened grizzly bears to state wildlife agencies.

Conservation groups pushed back Tuesday against a Trump administration rule change that could wipe out habitat protections for threatened and endangered species.

An investigation of Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission members launched by Gov. Bob Ferguson last summer is taking longer and costing more than expected.

Yellowstone National Park officials are enacting fishing restrictions on three rivers within the park due to warm temperatures and low river flows.